ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2020
Intergroup Contact, COVID-19 News Consumption, and the Moderating Role of Digital Media Trust on Prejudice Toward Asians in the United States: Cross-Sectional Study.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- The scar that takes time to heal: A systematic review of COVID-19-related stigma targets, antecedents, and outcomes.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- COVID-19-Related Racism and Mental Health Among Asian Americans: Integrative Review.Asian/Pacific Island nursing journal · 2025Review
- Anti-Asian sentiment on social media and mental health among Asian and Asian American populations in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic literature review.Social sciences & humanities open · 2025Article
- Factors Associated With Digital Capacity for Health Promotion Among Primary Care Workers: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Retrospecting Digital Media Use, Negative Emotions, and Trust Gaps During the COVID-19 Pandemic in China: Cross-Sectional Web-Based Survey.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Looking for your cross-group friends after the breakout? Children's intergroup contact behaviours before and after the onset of COVID-19.The British journal of social psychology · 2023Article
- Can the crowd judge truthfulness? A longitudinal study on recent misinformation about COVID-19.Personal and ubiquitous computing · 2023Article
- Impact on social capital and learning engagement due to social media usage among the international students in the U.S.Education and information technologies · 2022Article
- How Media Exposure, Media Trust, and Media Bias Perception Influence Public Evaluation of COVID-19 Pandemic in International Metropolises.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- COVID-19, economic threat and identity status: Stability and change in prejudice against Chinese people within the Canadian population.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Association between Perceived Trusted of COVID-19 Information Sources and Mental Health during the Early Stage of the Pandemic in Bangladesh.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- The Social Lives of Infectious Diseases: Why Culture Matters to COVID-19.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe perceived threat of a contagious virus may lead people to be distrustful of immigrants and out-groups. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the salient politicized discourses of blaming Chinese people for spreading the virus have fueled over 2000 reports of anti-Asian racial incidents and hate crimes in the United States.
objectiveThe study aims to investigate the relationships between news consumption, trust, intergroup contact, and prejudicial attitudes toward Asians and Asian Americans residing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare how traditional news, social media use, and biased news exposure cultivate racial attitudes, and the moderating role of media use and trust on prejudice against Asians is examined.
methodsA cross-sectional study was completed in May 2020. A total of 430 US adults (mean age 36.75, SD 11.49 years; n=258, 60% male) participated in an online survey through Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. Respondents answered questions related to traditional news exposure, social media use, perceived trust, and their top three news channels for staying informed about the novel coronavirus. In addition, intergroup contact and racial attitudes toward Asians were assessed. We performed hierarchical regression analyses to test the associations. Moderation effects were estimated using simple slopes testing with a 95% bootstrap confidence interval approach.
resultsParticipants who identified as conservatives (β=.08, P=.02), had a personal infection history (β=.10, P=.004), and interacted with Asian people frequently in their daily lives (β=.46, P<.001) reported more negative attitudes toward Asians after controlling for sociodemographic variables. Relying more on traditional news media (β=.08, P=.04) and higher levels of trust in social media (β=.13, P=.007) were positively associated with prejudice against Asians. In contrast, consuming news from left-leaning outlets (β=-.15, P=.001) and neutral outlets (β=-.13, P=.003) was linked to less prejudicial attitudes toward Asians. Among those who had high trust in social media, exposure had a negative relationship with prejudice. At high levels of trust in digital websites and apps, frequent use was related to less unfavorable attitudes toward Asians.
conclusionsExperiencing racial prejudice among the Asian population during a challenging pandemic can cause poor psychological outcomes and exacerbate health disparities. The results suggest that conservative ideology, personal infection history, frequency of intergroup contact, traditional news exposure, and trust in social media emerge as positive predictors of prejudice against Asians and Asian Americans, whereas people who get COVID-19 news from left-leaning and balanced outlets show less prejudice. For those who have more trust in social media and digital news, frequent use of these two sources is associated with lower levels of prejudice. Our findings highlight the need to reshape traditional news discourses and use social media and mobile news apps to develop credible messages for combating racial prejudice against Asians.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.